


on golden waters

by ghostin



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Coda, Episode 99, Episode Tag, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:07:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23446759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostin/pseuds/ghostin
Summary: "It seems I must have been tempting fate to talk about all the life I’ve lived since meeting you.” Fjord smiles wryly. Such great heights of irony hurt.
Relationships: Fjord/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 24
Kudos: 162





	on golden waters

**Author's Note:**

> here's my little contribution to the "god i wish this hiatus would end" donation box! special thanks to travis discussing ep98 on talks and dermot kennedy's song dancing under red skies for directly inspiring lines of dialogue, and thank YOU for reading/commenting!

Fjord remembers waking up to a pounding heart, but not his. His is quiet, soothed steady by Melora’s influence even as she nudges him free of her sun-warm embrace and trailing seaweed hair to the cold slap of rain.

Thunder rolls, the reverberation slow.

The rabbiting beat is _Caleb’s_ , heart against his back, pressed against his arm within each of Caleb’s digging fingertips.

“Just breathe, breathe _slow_ , slow…,” Caleb shushes, unable to take his own advice as his chest stutters with labored breath, fleeting panic spiked through calming tones. Fjord feels Jester squeeze his hand, the scar on his palm rippling. Beau’s palm curves over his shoulder and all he can hear is Caleb’s pulse like it thrums in his own ears.

He can’t do this again.

-

The night after the Empire ships depart and the Dynasty’s fleet takes its cover of darkness back to its own shores, they drink wine on the lower deck, sit down to the background noise of ongoing repairs and bask in the light of peace.

 _Bask_ is a strong word when Fjord considers the state of them where they encircle the table. Beau has an arm dangling over Caleb’s shoulder, leaning into the relative solidity of him in a way that could be casual but more than ever emphasizes how fucking tired she is. Jester and Veth are squeezed into the safe space between Beau and Yasha, the two of them sipping milk in varying shades of satisfaction. Jester is saying how good a job they’ve done just a few too many times. Yasha looks distant, lost in her own head. When Caduceus hands Fjord a cup of tea that should apparently “lend to the healing process,” he drinks it down in full, nothing left to pour out over the stern this time. And then of course, there’s Caleb, on Fjord’s opposite side, with something like hard-won stoicism etched into the fine lines between his brows.

Orly appears with a fresh barrel, and everyone shifts rickety stools closer together to make room for him, careful not to disturb the assemblage of candles flickering at the table’s center. Caleb makes a disgruntled sound when Fjord’s elbow knocks against his.

“Sorry,” Fjord says with a huff of laughter. “Another round?”

“No,” Caleb says with a shake of his head. “I’m exhausted enough as is.”

“What _was_ that shit you used?” Beau pipes up, lifting her chin at him.

“What shit?” Caleb asks, swirling the last dredges of red liquid at the bottom of his glass.

“The shit with all the dust and shit!” Beau says, a touch aggressive. She may be on her third or fourth glass, Fjord isn’t sure.

“Oh. The other night.” Caleb nods, mouth pulled taut a moment. “Uh, disintegrate. Disintegrate is what it’s called.”

Beau seems to contemplate that. _That_ , or whatever event preceded the casting in the first place.

“Was that when I was…,” Fjord wets his lips.

“Dead?” Beau supplies, blunt. He can see from the heavy set of her eyes that she’s pissed about it, which translates to intensely upset. Not _at_ him, _for_ him. As such, Fjord softens where she can’t, raising his shoulder in a half-shrug.

“Yes.”

“It was,” Caleb offers, glancing from Beau to Fjord. “Before that thing tried to drag you off into the sea.”

Beau grimaces before knocking back another mouthful of wine. Fjord can’t fault her. The thought alone is enough to conjure a deep nausea in the pit of his stomach.

“I’m sorry I missed it,” he says, aiming for light. Not that he doesn’t lament missing Caleb’s newest magical talents all the same. He clears his throat. “Thank you, by the way. I owe you double.”

Caleb doesn’t miss a beat.

“No, you don’t.” His eyes are bright, _serious._ He reaches out and squeezes Fjord’s wrist where it rests on the tabletop, reminiscent of comradely handshakes they’ve shared in the past but… _not_. Because Fjord can’t reach back. Just register the barest tremor in Caleb’s fingers when his grasp tightens and draws away.

Beau opens her mouth to say something and shuts it again, biting down on her teeth.

-

When what little energy they’d had for celebrations dries up and everyone slumps off to sleep, the captain’s quarters remain a no man’s land. It leaves a bad taste in Fjord’s mouth, worse than that of bitter, earthy tea that clings to his tongue like moss. The empty room and all its old, untouched trappings feel like a terrible allegory for how he doesn’t deserve the space or that title or this responsibility, even if this endeavor will only leave them on the seas for a fraction of the time he’d masqueraded on the Squall Eater.

He feels like he’s failed somehow, bunking down amongst the rows of hammocks with the others. But there’s a measure of comfort in the familiarity, even if half of their merry band stumble about half-drunk. He’d be lying if he said the idea of sleeping alone was anything but distressing.

Caleb, a bed over, catches his eye when he straightens up from folding his coat atop his discarded boots. Fjord’s mouth tugs sideways instinctually, his best attempt at a consoling smile. Caleb doesn’t smile back, or at least doesn’t put in quite enough energy for Fjord to recognize the quaver of his mouth as such. He _does_ pat a hand over his chest, over the twin chains and the pendants that hang together at the end of them.

Fjord’s golden orb suspended in golden amber. It’s supposed to reassure him, but his stomach drops, twists over itself. He manages a nod and watches as Caleb slips into the folds of his hammock without a word. And keeps watching as his knees draw up, his spine curling, the way his knobby elbow protrudes when he wraps his arms around himself in natural self-preservation.

Protectiveness is a useless trait when all Fjord can seem to do these days is reveal how vulnerable _he_ himself is, but the instinct surges under his skin anyway, a fierce pulse of blood.

It’s humiliating to admit he’d forgotten the presence of the stone lodged between his ribs, but in fairness, it was a willful amnesia. It was comforting to imagine the thing had disappeared along with the sword. Now, with it gone for real, he recognizes the hollow space it must have occupied, marvels at how deeply he’d wanted to be rid of it to stop feeling it altogether.

He wonders how much the slitted eye must have seen of his heart. More pressing than that, despite all the rational thought he can muster about how the goddamn marble doesn’t even exist on the same plane as they do anymore, he wonders if it can see Caleb’s through the translucent walls of its cage.

Fjord stares at the wooden boards above his head for hours.

-

“Land ho!” Veth screeches from the crow’s nest the following morning, early enough that Jester comes racing up to the deck still in her dressing gown.

“Where!?” she exclaims, a swirl of white frills and limbs as she runs to the rail and uses the momentum to boost herself half over the side. Beau, impressively vigilant despite what Fjord can only assume is a wicked hangover, leaps down from somewhere or other and catches her dress by the back of her waist.

“That way!” comes Veth’s answer from above.

“What way?” Fjord calls back from his post at the bow, blinking up through the shade of his fingers in the hopes of catching sight of one helpfully pointing halfling hand.

Exhaustion hangs like damp linen over his head. He can’t be sure how many hours of sleep he actually clocked, but the dull ache behind his eyes translates to _not enough_. He was up before the others, too. Or so he thought, until Frumpkin appeared on the upper decks alongside him before he’d even had time to do a single walkabout. The capuchin had swung himself delicately up to Fjord’s shoulder without invitation, head cocked in curiosity when Fjord had craned his neck to give him a cursory glance.

He’d said _good morning_ , uncertain whether it was Frumpkin or Caleb he was talking to, and when no Message followed, he’d decided to carry on as normal. At least, as normal as possible while the physical embodiment of Caleb’s concern for him sat on his shoulder and nibbled on its own fingers.

The wizard still hasn’t shown his face above deck, and so Frumpkin remains. His tail wraps tight around Fjord’s upper arm as he bends to retrieve a map case from the collection stored next to the ship’s wheel.

“Starboard?” Veth shouts again, more question than answer. Fjord spins to the right anyway.

It seems almost unfair to call the sandy, grassy spit slowly being gnawed on by waves _land_ , but that is, technically, what it is. About the width of the ship and maybe twice its size in length, it doesn’t have much to boast about.

That doesn’t stop Jester from racing to the other side of the ship to catch sight of it, Beau close behind, still with a loose fistful of crisp fabric.

“It’s a deserted island!” Jester exclaims as she leans against the wood.

“The hell is it doing out here?” Beau asks.

Fjord wonders the same as he rolls open the map and drags a finger over the shapes inked into the sea. Frumpkin leans closer as if he, too, is tracking something.

If Fjord has their position correct—and… _admittedly_ , Orly would be the one to ask for confirmation—there still shouldn’t be anything for leagues, Rumblecusp a few days journey away, but maybe glorified sandbars don’t get a lot of cartographer attention.

“Waiting for us to discover it!” Jester says with wonder, twirling on the balls of her feet before her heels finally drop back to the boards beneath her. Beau has the foresight to let go before she’s twined up in skirts, but Jester grabs up her hand and swings her along anyway. Her dark blue curls bob when her head lifts in Fjord’s direction. “We’re stopping, right? Just for a little?”

Frumpkin chirps what sounds like an encouraging note, tiny hand clutching the point of Fjord’s ear.

He can’t think of a reason to say no. There’s a welcome relief in saying _yes_.

-

By the time the sun has peaked, they’ve discovered all there is to discover. The island, now claimed in the Traveler’s name—fair, considering this _is_ a detour from the Con—has stretches of cream-coloured sand and a wide patch of overgrown grass dotted with no more than four trees at its central height. It’s home only to a pile of wood that must have been a lone raft in a long past life and a few squawking seabirds. And yet despite its utter lack of comforts, something about the novelty so close on the heels of diplomatic missions is enough to lure the entire crew to the banks.

Fjord can’t speak for all of them, but the brush of salty air and beaches pocked with pebbles and shells smacks of the Nein’s first afternoon spent on the Menagerie Coast. It seems so long ago: his first return to the seaside since the party’s beginnings, beating sun on his shoulders and waves against his back. Caleb, in nothing but the whole of his freckled skin, walking straight into the ocean with more bravery than Fjord was prepared to give him credit for.

 _That_ is a concept he barely remembers.

The greatest comparison he can make is the way time seems self-contained here, too. Yasha had been absent the last time, so Jester recruits her help in building castles and doorways and dicks with damp sand. Beau leads meditation which turns to sunbathing which turns to napping, easing them gently into a late supper. The last of the ship’s mending continues in shifts, and once everyone has been fed, they break off into groups, snatches of laughter dotting the island from tip to tip.

It’s… nothing that Fjord could have predicted after recent events, but if anything, this feels closer to the evening of triumph they deserve than the strained smiles over cheap alcohol had been. So whatever his authority out here actually _means_ , he’s using it to give every single one of them a break.

For him that looks like settling on the seam between the beach and the grass and waiting for Caleb to find him. Some things feel inevitable even in strange times.

It doesn’t take long, really, in part because Frumpkin’s watchful eye hadn’t gone completely absent even after they’d anchored. Fjord manages to turn his mind towards the blessedly low tones of Caduceus’ bone flute and Yasha’s bone harp dancing around a rare harmony in the distance, and he hasn’t quite slipped into his own thoughts by the time Caleb comes strolling up the low incline to meet him.

His coat must have been discarded hours ago under the pressure of the midday sun; the sleeves of his gray tunic are rolled up, the clasps at the neck pulled open. Fjord might have been tempted to do similarly and do away with his armor, but it had felt like a mistake waiting to happen. He hasn’t exactly _forgotten_ the part where he was stabbed in the chest two nights ago, caught vulnerable and unprepared.

Caleb’s hands are bare, too, a stark detail Fjord has no business being so enamored by.

“Do you mind, Captain?” Caleb asks when he’s gotten close enough. _Captain_ carries a wisp of the same playful lilt it had two days ago, which is both surprising and ridiculously encouraging.

“Wouldn’t make much sense for me to tell the navigator where he can go,” Fjord says after he’s hurdled over that initial bewilderment, smiling as he waves Caleb on. Caleb sits with a gusty sigh and Fjord glances sidelong at him, reading his outward stare and following it to the waves beyond them. They’re not quite close enough to touch, but the presence Caleb carries with him gently crowds into Fjord’s space. It has a habit of doing that these days, warmer and larger than Fjord ever thought possible when he’d looked at Caleb and thought of him as meek.

“I realize it hasn’t been much time at all since we last did this,” Caleb says, emphasis on _this_ , because heartfelt conversations have become something of a thing for the pair of them. “But to be honest with you, it feels like it’s been—a _week_.”

Fjord hums his agreement, mildly troubled by that revelation. Life or death crises have a habit of feeling _long_. He drapes his wrists over his raised knees, knitting his fingers together.

“Maybe there’s nothing new to say,” Caleb muses, and Fjord knows without looking that his thumb must be rubbing along the jagged stroke of healing flesh dragged through his palm.

He knows because he does it himself. There is something grounding about the feel of a scar, in the way it inherently represents life lived, life lived _on_ in the wake of what might have meant an ending. It’s too early to tell if the one hewn in the center of Fjord’s chest will carry that same subdued placation once it’s stopped being the trigger for panic. He’s been avoiding looking at it.

The web gets tangled around the one in his hand, though. Most scars tether to memory that hurts. This scar hurt once, the one that he and Caleb share, carved in soft skin, but that’s where the pain ends, in the flesh. The memory in question holds more complicated associations than just disaster averted.

And maybe that’s why his fingers seek the familiar line of it, subconscious drawn to that reminder of connection when the conscious gets caught in its most destructive of loops.

“Maybe I could… reiterate some things,” Fjord offers, pulling his gaze away from where flecks of sunset encrust the crest of each wave in light. He looks at Caleb instead, waiting for the telling moment when Caleb’s eyes dip from where they’ve fixed and find a new point of focus on Fjord’s face. He does that a lot, like the intensity of his gaze should at least come with a preface. If _all_ of Fjord’s inhibitions had died with him, he might tell Caleb he’s applying too many negative connotations to ‘intensity’ and _ask_ to be the creature pinned under that gaze.

“Though it seems I must have been tempting fate to talk about all the life I’ve lived since meeting you.” He smiles wryly. Such great heights of irony _hurt_.

“Don’t do that again,” Caleb says, as much teasing as warning.

“I won’t,” Fjord says. In fact, he’ll do everything in his power to avoid it. “But if I can reassure you… I’m fine. Seriously. Fine. If it wasn’t for this group, I probably wouldn’t be.”

That’s the truth of it. For all the danger being here has meant, he’s almost convinced he would have met a different end on his own, one without a well-timed spell to haul him back from the brink.

The tip of his tongue runs along the edge of one tusk, thoughtful.

“It isn’t—,” he pauses, sighing through a nervous laugh. He might be straying from the point he wants but _gods_ , dying puts things into perspective. “It isn’t bad to be me. That’s something I could never convince myself of before.”

Caleb’s frown deepens, pained, and Fjord can only assume it’s because he’s intimately familiar with the feeling.

“And if I have anything to say about it, I’d like to _keep_ the life I have now. For a little while, even if it means I’m running on borrowed time. I mean that selfishly, really. But I’m not so naïve as to think my being here doesn’t make waves, too. I know you care. I know you’re looking out.”

 _You_ , _you all_ , the distinction seems pointless. Both meanings of the word are true and it’s become a time-honoured tradition not to specify the difference. Mostly because they’re all—and here he does mean _all_ —absolute shit at this. He clears his throat, like he can draw attention away from the tracks he’s just left.

“What happened was a mistake. I let my guard down and I won’t let it happen again.”

His gaze had strayed into safer spaces, but it flits back to Caleb now, just in time to see certainty cement in his expression.

“Neither will I,” he says. Fjord lets the truth of that sink in, happy to let that hook something soft and sensitive inside of him and _tug_. It’s different to hear it out loud.

“I know,” he says eventually, fighting to keep his voice even. “I see who you are and I admire him, you understand that. I know you might question your own intentions but I—,” he wavers, trying to say it right, “—I know where your heart lies.”

Caleb swallows, tucking fallen ginger hair back behind his ears.

“Do you?” The vowels are round and full.

“I do. Can’t say I’m sure about a lot of things, Caleb, but I do,” Fjord says, his mouth slipping into a smile.

They lapse into silence Fjord doesn’t expect. Notes of music carry with the rhythmic chop of waves, but they exist somewhere just beyond intrusion, white noise to the quiet contained in their pocket of solitude.

The setting sun turns the ocean gold before bleeding into pink, and then into a bruising purple, the last colour left when the horizon slides to the darker side of dusk. Fjord thinks it was Jester and Veth sitting on the very edges of the shoreline, but they’ve become nothing but silhouettes, just like he and Caleb must be silhouettes to the rest of the island, too. With the added company of Caleb’s amulet, the two of them are like silhouettes to the world at large, undetectable and, honestly, better for it.

It’s then and only then, in the haze of encroaching night, that Caleb moves again. Fjord hears the sand shift before he registers Caleb turning towards him. Fjord’s chin ducks, half-prepared to finally endure a meticulously considered scolding, but when he lifts it again, looking just a touch sheepish, Caleb is leaning in to kiss him.

Caleb _is_ kissing him and Fjord’s mouth parts, instinctual, afraid to miss its mark as Caleb’s bottom lip pillows against his. His inhale is instinctual too, sharp through his nose as his lungs pinch in shock, and Caleb withdraws, eyes closed as his forehead bumps against Fjord’s.

Fjord gapes in the stillness, dumbfounded, peering through half-lidded eyes at blurred flushes of colour. There are about a thousand questions curling like burnt paper on his tongue, but he has the courtesy not to ask them. Not when they’ve worked so long on this sense of understanding, knowing where and when to reach out, pull back, outstretch a hand should the other have guts enough to take it. It all rounds out into _trust_ , Fjord thinks, panicked for a handful of heart-pounding seconds because his brain wants to put every interaction they’ve ever had into a neat row, maybe just to prove to himself this makes sense. He’d like it to. He _needs_ it to.

“ _Ca_ —,”

Caleb breathes, a shuddering sound, and then rises to him again, and Fjord has no desires except to tip his head to meet him halfway. Whatever consternation had furrowed his brow lifts and keeps lifting, tension a slow rolling melt off his back as Caleb’s hand cups the side of his neck, the edge of roughened thumb tracing the line of his stubbly jaw.

A rough, _relieved_ sound sticks to the back of Fjord’s throat as they kiss. There are teeth and tusks to contend with, but they don’t impede one lingering press from the next, Caleb’s tongue a slick heat against the seam of his lips. Fjord’s fingers find slim wrist, slip to that knobby elbow of last night and then up again to wrap around Caleb’s shoulder and hold.

Caleb’s lips purse as he pulls back, but his hand sweeps to clutch at the back of Fjord’s neck, a firm grasp cradling the base of his skull. He doesn’t speak at first. Pupils blown wide are shuttered under his lashes as he looks down, that flickery movement the _only_ movement. Fjord waits. Despite all this sudden resolve, he doesn’t trust himself not to trip over anything he could try to say.

Caleb’s mouth opens a moment before words come.

“You… _you_ lying on the deck of that ship,” he says, his voice strained, accent heavy with conviction. “I meant what I said, Fjord. Never again.”

Fjord’s hand mirrors his, curling at the nape of his neck through feathered strands of hair, swept free from the knot at the back of his head.

“I understand, I do.” He wants to apologize but he knows that’s not what Caleb is asking for. He’s asking for more of that building trust, wanting to hear the words and believe them. “I can only give you my word.”

If there was more, Caleb would have it.

“You know, I think that’s enough,” Caleb says, voice lifting a little, like it surprises him, too. Fjord’s expression eases into smiling, weak and grateful.

Caleb retreats slowly, amicably, sitting straight again. Fjord’s hand slips from his neck, fingers tracing over cold chain as they go. Caleb catches his wrist before the touch falls away and pulls his hand into the enfolding hold of his two, settling in his lap.

In some part of his mind, Fjord reels, buzzes, orbits around the reality of Caleb Widogast kissing him on the beach of some secret island while their friends carry on with each other unawares in the foreground because he _cares_ , because he can’t have Fjord die. Not again.

The part that matters now watches Caleb toy with his fingers, drawing patterns up and down over every line and bend before tracing veins across his palm, nervous energy ebbing the longer pale skin rubs over green.

They stay like that until someone comes close enough to wave a lantern and invite them back to the ship; Caleb’s thumb relearning the shape of Fjord’s scar, making a new pact.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you again for reading/commenting!! come find me on tumblr @ reechietozier :-)


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